Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Tuesday February 28, 2012 @03:16AM
from the larry-wall-is-full-of-lies dept.

daria42 writes "Steve Jobs might not be around any more to enforce some of Apple's stricter policies, but that doesn't mean the company is letting it all hang loose. Overnight the U.K. company which produces a speech recognition app called Evi, which mimics many of the functions of Apple's Siri, confirmed Apple had approached his company letting it know that Evi was being reviewed for possible breaches of Apple's App Store policies. The reason? A clause in the policy which bans apps too similar to Apple's existing software. It does appear to matter to Apple that Siri doesn't function that well in the U.K., because of a lack of good localisation."
Supposedly Evi will be continue to be allowed on iOS if it alters its interface to be dissimilar enough from Siri to placate Apple.

But Apple has been pulling competing applications from the app store since it's inception, no alterate email clients, SMS clients, diallers, MP3 players, browsers (proper browsers, not viewers for server generated images or window dressing for the existing rendering engine) and others.

The question is, why is Apple even threatening? Their normal procedure is to pull the app, remove it from everyone's phone, revoke the developers key and send an iAssassination squad to eliminate the one who dared defy them.

But Apple has been pulling competing applications from the app store since it's inception, no alterate email clients, SMS clients, diallers, MP3 players,

That's odd, because you can go to the App Store and find plenty of alternate email clients, diallers, SMS clients, and MP3 players. Plenty that have been there a long time.

browsers (proper browsers, not viewers for server generated images or window dressing for the existing rendering engine) and others.

That's the only one in your list that's true. You are allowed to create alternative browsers, and there are many on the App store. But you're not allowed to put your own browser rendering engine on iOS. In part because it would fall foul of the no interpreters with downloadable content rule.

You are allowed to compete with Apple's own apps on functionality. What you're not allowed to do is to copy the UI of one of Apple's Apps. That's the reason Evi have been asked to change. Because the UI is too much of a Siri copy.

You are allowed to compete with Apple's own apps on functionality. What you're not allowed to do is to copy the UI of one of Apple's Apps. That's the reason Evi have been asked to change. Because the UI is too much of a Siri copy.

People would have trouble mistaking iBooks for Delicious Library. For one thing they aren't even on the same OS. For another the apps are for entirely different purposes. For another every single thing about the apps is different other than the concept of displaying books on book shelves.

Had the boot been on the other foot (DL from Apple, iBooks from DM) iBooks wouldn't have been denied from the iOS AppStore.

You are allowed to compete with Apple's own apps on functionality. What you're not allowed to do is to copy the UI of one of Apple's Apps. That's the reason Evi have been asked to change. Because the UI is too much of a Siri copy.

You could also use Google's walled garden, or Microsoft's walled garden, or RIMs walled garden.

Google's walls are considerably shorter than the others, but walls nontheless. It really just comes down to business management: There is some profit to be had in device manufacture alone, but there is far greater profit to be made in providing services those devices must depend upon.

Mostly, yes. Short walls. There are two limitations though. Firstly, you can't install anything that needs root access without resorting to some form of exploit. Carriers love this one, because it lets them install lots of bundled crap on their contract phones that the user (being without root access) has no way to remove. Espicially evil when they install spyware, as has been known to happen. Secondly, most devices are locked to only accepted signed firmware images from the manufacturer - though more their

You could also use Google's walled garden, or Microsoft's walled garden, or RIMs walled garden.

Google doesn't have a walled garden. it's an open park you can walk into and out of all of your own accord.
I think you need to look up the definition of "walled garden" or actually use Android for yourself. It's nothing like Apple's system of lockdown.

Actually I've never been sure of the meaning of "walled garden". For example most gardens I know of have a gate that you can use to exit and explore the wider, ahem, HTML fauna. I know the term is used pejoratively here on slashdot but to most other people it sounds kind of nice. You know, like maybe there is a tea shop you can visit just next door. Perhaps it's time to revisit our horticultural themed analogy, would critics be better off using "prison yard"?

The analogy about what you're allowed to grow in your garden is a decent one... On the Apple side we have a controlled neighbourhood where you're required to select one of the limited number of approved layouts and plant only the kind of plants that the committee allow, ensuring that you have a nice garden but restricting your freedom to develop it in the way you like. There are no controls on Android gardens, giving potential for more creative designs and interesting gardens, but with nothing stopping you

You could also use Google's walled garden, or Microsoft's walled garden, or RIMs walled garden.

Google doesn't have a walled garden. it's an open park you can walk into and out of all of your own accord.
I think you need to look up the definition of "walled garden" or actually use Android for yourself. It's nothing like Apple's system of lockdown.

I think you're confused about what the term "walled garden" refers to. It means that the carrier or service provider controls exactly what is and isn't allowed on the phone.

Apple is the only platform you mentioned with a walled garden approach. Google (Android), Microsoft (MS Mobile), and RIM (Blackberry) all allow users to install any application they want. They may not be allowed in an official app store, but you can just connect your phone via usb or email files to your phone and do whatever you want. Each of those platforms may have varying levels of what features/hardware the software is allowed access to once it's on the phone, usually for security but sometimes for business reasons, but that is not the same thing as a walled garden.

If not all Android phones are unlocked in this fashion then Android is not. Otherwise you can say that Apple does not have a walled garden since you just need to use an untethered jailbreak.

No, you can go into a shop and _buy_ an unlocked Android phone. No messing around, no geeky stuff, just buy it. My fiancee (who isn't a geek) did exactly this last year - ordered an unlocked Nexus-S from Play.com and stuck a PAYG SIM in it. Let me know when you find an official retailer selling an off the shelf jail broken iOS device complete with manufacturer's warranty.

If your carrier is blocking you from checking the "unknown sources" box, you need a new carrier. (I'm doubtful such a carrier exists considering that Verizon doesn't block it and they tend to be the most overreaching, but hey, I'm open to citations.)

Walled garden, yadda yadda fear mongering bias making use of all the negative buzzwords to describe Apple. Have you seen how beautiful a real Walled Garden is? At the same time who doesn't lock in customers?

Just another reason to avoid the proprietary lock-in hell that is Apple's walled garden. Sure their products are shiny and smooth but you trade all your rights to the device you just forked out enough to buy a car on for that ease of use.

What proprietary lock-in hell? How do they lock you in? At most you could claim that they lock you out, but considering the fact that they tend to use standard protocols and formats for everything (with the dock connector being a historically-justified exception, because there was nothing "standard" when it was created), I fail to see exactly what locks you in to Apple products other than your willingness to stick to the only fully integrated ecosystem that works seamlessly.

Really? Your complaints about the iPhone 4s are "hard to use interface", "short battery life", and "short included cable"? Talk about praising with faint damns!

My Galaxy Nexus's interface is slightly harder to use than my iPad's (not a huge deal, but it's certainly not "easier" by any rational definition). Its battery life is about the same as my girlfriend's iPhone 4S, and it came with a charge cable of about the same length. (I bought us both long cables from monoprice.com for a few bucks, so not a bi

Apple doesn't have a monopoly on smartphones, software for smartphones or anything really.

They do however have a product (the iPhone) which is designed to only receive software authorized by Apple (through the App store) but this is not a monopoly, there are plenty of competing products on the market.

Yes, but to establish market power (not market "domination", which has no definition because it's not a meaningful term), you have to concede that the other smartphone platforms pose no significant competition to Apple. As any Slashdot story or any sales figure would show, that's not the case.

Apple is an immensely powerful player in the smartphone space, but its ability to cause competitors to act isn't because of market power in the economic and business sense, but instead because of a publicity profile. Apple is the one to beat because of a combination of customer satisfaction, marketing, and industrial engineering and design prowess (and increasingly, technical achievement in certain areas). They're not the ones to beat because of units sold or because they can force competitors to do specifically what Apple wants them to do.

Their success despite stronghold on platform rules, and especially considering that they are sometimes unevenly applied and result in some functionality gaps with competing products is very strong evidence of competitive success, not interference with the market. These forces would tend to drive customers away toward the fine alternatives available, except that people view the benefits as far outweighing the inconveniences. Report after report shows unparalleled satisfaction and repeat purchases of their mobile devices, along with strong growth over a period of time.

In short, popularity alone isn't market power in the context of competition law. Customers and developers have plenty of options if they don't like the balance of pros and cons offered by Apple. Just because a huge number of people use something that a small but vocal crowd thinks is unduly restrictive is not an antitrust issue.

I don't even like Apple, but I agree with everything this dude ^ said. I love my Android, I find it much better than any iOS device, but when so many people buy and don't care about the lock-in and so on, you can't really argue they aren't doing something right.

Every product Apple has created in the last 10 years has been designed specifically to drive sales of their other products, while maintaining a closed, integrated system that can't be broken out of. That is literally Apple's core business model, if you look at anything Steve Jobs has ever said. If they ever actually achieve market dominance in an area, they will be destroyed by anti-trust litigation (or should, but with $80+ billion for lawyers, they're untouchable) because their entire strategy is abusin

Really? An "integrated system that can't be broken out of"? You're talking shit on so many levels. As a simple user myself with allusions of being a super user, I can easily transfer everything to another OS tomorrow if I wanted, saying it requires work to do so isn't unfathomable, any switchover will. For those on the hacker level for greater freedom, you can jailbreak and remove drm protections with instructions available online.

Sounds more like the typical whine of people who, after tens of articles on/. bitching that Apple doesn't allow (apps similar to their OS apps, porn, flagrant ripoffs of existing apps), still don't comprehend that the Apple is not a monopoly & thus App store rules are not abuse of a monopoly.

If you want different app store rules on your iPhone, jailbeak it. If, as I suspect, you don't event have an iPhone, spare us from your whining...

I think there is some confusion about the dictionary definition of monopoly and the legal definition. In the UK, at least, you are deemed to hold a monopoly position within a market if you control more than 25%, which apple certainly does in the smartphone market.

Also, and I admit it might be a tenuous, you could argue that apps for iOS is a single market, and therefore apple has a 100% monopoly on the supply of apps for iOS, a position that I think most of us agree the abuse to one degree or another.

This may be a stupid policy from Apple, but it's not an antitrust violation since they do not hold a monopoly position in the smartphone market. Well, unless everyone on slashdot has been vastly overstating the market share of Android...

Either Android is "killing" in marketshare, or Apple has a monopoly and is thus exposed to antitrust. You can't have your cake and eat it.

Apple didn't pull the app immediately, without warning. They contacted the developer and offered to help work with them to make changes so they'd find it acceptable. That's not usually how antitrust situations pan out at all. (Do you remember Microsoft approaching Netscape and saying, "Hey... we're cool with your web browser alternative and we'd even offer it as a download from our own site if you'd work with us to make sure we're satisfied it's not just

I concur. While the text to speech engine and the interpreter seem to work correctly it suffers from a lack of information.

When I tried saying "What is the weather in Sydney" I got an answer saying that the functionality is coming soon and to try Accuweather instead. Why not just pipe that request to Google and return the text at the top?

Other classic ones are maths problems. I asked "What is five plus five." It correctly interpreted "5+5?" and then said "This appears to be a maths question, try asking the question in words."I eventually beat it by asking "What is the addition of 5 and 5?" and it correctly answered 10.

When I tried saying "What is the weather in Sydney" I got an answer saying that the functionality is coming soon and to try Accuweather instead. Why not just pipe that request to Google and return the text at the top?

But I was assured by everyone on Slashdot that Siri was trivial to duplicate in its entirety and not remotely challenging, interesting or innovative, and that Android had the exact same (and better) functionality forever anyway.

So clearly your personal experiences with a competitor to Siri must be wrong. *Ahem*

Kidding aside, how in the hell did you come up with "What is the addition of 5 and 5?" Seriously - you must be phenomenal at Infocom type "guess the verb" text adventure games because such a phrasing

that was the case when evi was originally slashdotted (SURPRISE) but now it actually works quite reliably; and although it doesn't always directly answer the question it can usually provide a way for you to find the answer quickly

Siri doesn't understand British english? I can understand if it doesn't support german, french and other non-english languages, but doesn't understand different dialects of english seems bad.

If you think about it, it makes sense.

A different language is a different language and as a result rules must be explicitly programmed for those languages and everyone understands that.

English sounds English to a human ear, the syntax is based on the same rules but the usage of the language varies a lot around the world. Meaning is coloured by local culture.

For example, in India, it considered rude to ever say No to a request, so the first response to a request is normally Yes, followed by a qualification. In the UK, that cultural bias to saying No doesn't exist, so when we say Yes, we really mean Yes. The same language, using the same syntax but the important part of the sentence comes in different places because of the local culture.

The problem is that humans are really good at deciphering meaning from what is effectively errors in the communication protocol and so everyone tends to think English is just English with strange pronunciation and so tend to over look the need for specific rules for each region.

I know a lot of immigrants from Europe. Their accents are there but it's not bad, they are completely understandable to the average American. In the past, some of them tried Dragon to poor to mediocre success and Siri is no better, if not worse.

And Siri should be better, the inquiries are often simple, repeated commands. But Siri doesn't seem to ever learn. It would be so simple to set up profiles to train it to compensate to some degree, but like most computer programs, the human has to conform to it a

Yes exaggerated, and in improvised phonetics, but imagine a spectrum analyser who has to sort out that these two sound clips mean the same.
UK English is absolutely not the same. When did you last order a pint in London? Don't get me started on Northern vs. Southern accents.

Siri supports US English (speaks in the default female voice everyone as heard), UK English (low pitched male voice), AU English (different female voice, better than the US voice, in my opinion), French (effeminate-sounding male voice, as you would expect from any French guy), and German (the best sounding female voice in my opinion). The localization issues are most likely related to geolocation services not offered outside of the US, such the integration with Maps and search for local services. As I und

Siri supports US English (speaks in the default female voice everyone as heard), UK English (low pitched male voice), AU English (different female voice, better than the US voice, in my opinion), French (effeminate-sounding male voice, as you would expect from any French guy), and German (the best sounding female voice in my opinion).

You are confusing synthesis with recognition.

Siri and Evi both use Nuance's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology. This technology can support both US and UK English (among many others), depending on which models are used. Presumably, this can be configured by the application software, based on the location of the device and/or user setup (I do not have a smart phone, so I'm not sure if the latter is supported). The Nuance technology also adapts to the user's acoustics and word usage over time, s

Anyway it seems that Apple may have reconsidered their position on this

Pure speculation, and most likely untrue.

Siri is a huge strategic asset to Apple. They paid $200M to buy the company, and have only just begun to deploy it (what you see today is massively de-featured from what they bought - most of the potential revenue generating interfaces have been removed from it, one can only assume temporarily until referrel fee agreements are in place).

The only source for this info is the developer itself and they have an obvious reason to put it out there. Not only does it get them PR ("The app so good Apple doesn't want you to have it!") but it may lead to impulse sales since once an app is pulled you get to keep it if you already bought it.

There is no inkling from Apple. And now the developer is even backing down, so that they have a convenient answer when people ask why their app was never pulled.

I never heart of evi, it is a 3 star (fart apps get 5 starts since theydo whtat they are supposed to do...always...even show fart adds) app on android market. But since it is free, i tried installing it. Now if only it manages to integrate better in the OS....

Supposedly Evi will be continue to be allowed on iOS if it alters its interface to be dissimilar enough from Siri to placate Apple.

Which is not an entirely unreasonable request. Apple's strength is massively in brand recognition, so making sure your customers aren't confused about what is and what isn't an Apple product makes a lot of sense.

Plus they didn't just pull it, they apparently told the developers what they were concerned about and asked for their cooperation.

Apple is providing everyone a service by showing the what the consequences are of having a tightly controlled platform.

Great products that almost everyone wants to have? Half a trillion market cap constantly raising in a recessive economy? Considering the alternatives, I'm perfectly fine with their implementation of a tightly controlled platform, especially considering that for just $100 a year it stops being tightly controlled for me.

The supposed positive effects you mention don't exist. If you point out how bad the walled garden is, you STILL get called a nutty RMS fanboy and people STILL don't see a problem with it. If anything they have created fanboys of curated computing that didn't exist before.

FTR, my opinion is that the iOS model should follow something much more like the system Apple are adopting for Mountain Lion (apps from the store signed and launched without user input, apps from elsewhere queried on first launch by admin password) which marries the benefits of both models. What do I know though? I don't make smartphones.

That would be a massive improvement. I couldn't really complain about iOS if they allowed unsigned apps to be installed out-of-the-box.

Apple would still be the world's worst patent abuser though and #1 employer of ethically questionable labor.

I agree. They made a product that people wanted to buy, knowing or not knowing that Apple owns the product they purchased and will continue to restrict anything on it unless Apple can make a buck. I want people to buy Apple products, and I want them to continue to think they are "bright" or "creative" because they purchased these magical devices. It gives me the edge on everyone else who are trying to talk into their phones in the elevator when I am getting real work done.

That is the way Apple defines things. Apple is allowed to steal all the ideas they want. They even gloat about it. But if anybody uses an idea that Apple stold, Apple will scream, and cry, and especially sue.